Most
of the time the files that you need to
backup are your data files. If you lose the
hard disk, you can install the program files
and other software from the original CDs or
diskettes but your data files are the most
valuable and they need to be restored from
your own backups or "Second Copies".

If you organize the data files properly, it
will make the task of backing them up much
easier. So here are a few tips on how to
organize your data files.

Ideally, all your data files should be kept
under a single folder (such as "My
Documents" or ""Data") organized into sub
folders by subject or type of application.
This makes it easy to back up all the data
with a single Second Copy profile.

Most applications allow you to change the
default data folder. Once you decide on the
file organization, change your application
settings to automatically save files in the
appropriate folder so that you don't have to
change the folders every time you save a
document.

It is not a good idea to mix your program
files and data files in the same folder. So
avoid saving your documents into folders
such as "C:\Program Files\MSOffice".

To
quickly create a new profile, open the
source folder in Windows Explorer then drag
and drop the desired files on to the Second
Copy's main window. The profile wizard will
pop-up with default settings. Check and
adjust the settings and give the profile a
new name.

At times you may need to restore all of
the files from the destination back to the
source. Second Copy makes this easy for you.
Mark the profile you want to restore and
then select Restore from the Tools menu.
This would copy the files from the
destination folder back to the source
folder.

If you want to restore the files
somewhere else, then you can use Windows
Explorer that you are already familiar with.

1. Select Right click on the profile and
select "Source files...". This will open an
Explorer Window with your source folder.

2. Right click on the profile again and
select "Destination files...". This will
open
another Explorer Window with your destination folder.

3. Now you can simply select files from
the destination folder that you want to
restore and drag-and-drop them on the source folder.

4. If the files are compressed, instead
of drag-and-drop use the Extract files
feature.

Second Copy can run as a service only on
Windows XP/2003/Vista systems. This
is helpful if you want to run Second Copy in
the memory while the user is not logged in.
Once Second Copy is set to run as a service,
it will run the profiles automatically as
scheduled.

First,
uncheck the
box "Start at log in" under Edit |
Options | Startup tab. Then
right mouse click on the Second Copy icon in
the system tray, and select Exit.

Before you can run Second Copy as a service
you need to install it. Once it is
installed, you can start Second Copy service
from the Services component in the
Administrative Tools.

1. Click on Start

2. Select Run

3. Enter
"cmd" in the
Open box and click on OK. This
will open another window
with a command prompt.

4.
Change the directory to
"\Program
Files\Second Copy 8".

5. Type
"scsvc /install"
without the quotes and hit Enter.
This will install Second
Copy to run as a service.

6. Once you have installed
Second Copy to run as a service, open the
Services
component from the Administrative Tools

7. Select Second Copy
Service from the list of installed
services

8. Click on the Action
menu and select Properties

9. Click on the Log On tab

110. Check Allow service to interact
with desktop

11. Click OK

13. Click on Start to start Second
Copy as a service interactively

13. Create the desired profiles in Second
Copy

14. From the Services component,
Stop the service

15. Uncheck Allow service to interact
with desktop

16. Start the service

For Windows Vista:

1. Set Run cmd to Run as a service
as follows:

a. Click Start and type cmd ; in
the Search box. This should produce a list
consisting of one entry: the shortcut to the Windows Command
Processor, cmd

b. Right-click the cmd shortcut
and choose Pin to Start Menu

c. Click Start again. Right-click
the Command Prompt shortcut you just added
to
the Start menu and choose Properties

d. Click the Advanced button and
click to select the Run as administrator
checkbox

e. Click OK to save your changes

2. From the command prompt, go to
"\Program Files\Second Copy 8" folder and run
Scsvc.exe /install

3. Enter Secpol.msc on the Run
command to open Local Security Settings

4. Add the user under Log on as a
service so that the user or the group
will be
able to login as a service

5. Start the service for Second
Copy from the Services console

For more information, refer to the Help file
under the section "Run as a service"

Note: The current version of Second Copy 8 does not run as a service under
Windows 7 and Windows 2008.

When
you set a profile to compress files, Second
Copy creates a single Zip file (or
optionally individual zip files) in the
destination folder that contains all the
compressed source files. It is best to keep
these Zip files smaller than 10MB in size.

Efficiency - If you have a profile that is
compressing lots of files into a single Zip
file, the Zip file will get quite big. This
makes the future compression and
decompression activities on this Zip file
take longer. The length of time needed to
update files inside a large Zip file grows
exponentially with the size of the Zip file.

Safety - If one of the files inside the Zip
file gets corrupted during update, there is
a danger of the entire Zip file becoming
unusable. Keeping the Zip files smaller, you
will reduce the risk of losing other files.

Space - When updating files in the Zip,
Second Copy makes a copy of the original Zip
file into a temporary file and makes the
updates to this file. On successful
compression, it deletes the original Zip
file and renames the temporary file to the
Zip file. So you need enough space on the
destination drive to hold the original Zip
file and the temporary file. If you do not
have enough free space on the destination
drive, you can uncheck the option to "Use
Destination folder for temporary Zip files",
assuming that you have enough free space in
your TEMP directory.

(If there is not enough space on the
destination drive, you will get a
XcdErrorWrite error in the Second Copy log.
If you see a file named _Zaxxxxx in the
destination folder, it a leftover temporary
file that should have been deleted. You can
delete it.)

If you don't have enough space on the
destination drive (such as an IOmega Zip
disk) you can configure Second Copy to use
the Windows Temp directory for the temporary
Zip file instead of the destination drive.
This may slow down the process since the
temporary file has to be copied to and from
the drive. To set this option:

The
directory macro expansion feature can be
used to create different Zip files for
different dates. For instance, if you create
a compressed profile named: "Daily Reports -
$DATE$" (without the quotes), Second Copy
will create different Zip files in the
destination folder for each day it runs. For
example, the following files would be
created if the profile was run on July
15, 16, and 17, 2010.

Second Copy treats the root directory of a
drive in a special way. You can copy files
from the root directory of a drive to
another drive as long as you don't select a
folder also. If you do, the files will not
be copied. There are two ways of working
around this.

1. Use UNC name to address the drive instead of the drive letter and a
colon. e.g.
Use \\computername\sharename instead of C:\

2. Create two separate profiles, one for
the root directory files only and another
for the folders.

There
are two types of include/exclude
specifications: Folder specifications and
file specifications.

Folder specifications

These must start with a slash and must end
with a slash. No drive letter, colon or
special characters such as * or ? are
allowed. You don't have to specify all
folder levels only the ones that are unique.
For instance, if the full path of a folder
is C:\Data\Personal\Letters\Saved\ you can
specify \Data\Personal\, \Letters\,
\Letters\Saved\, \Saved\ or any other parts
of the path between two slashes.

File specifications

These do not have any slashes and they can
contain wildcards such as * or ?. (Example:
*.doc)

Selection process

1. Second Copy first selects only those
folders which match with the include folder
specification.

2. Then within those folders it only
considers files that match the file
specification.

3. Then it uses exclude specifications to
eliminate any files are folders from
consideration.

4. Now the remaining files are candidates
for the copy process.

Copy Process

Second Copy uses the above method to select
files from the source and the destination
and then compares their date/time stamps to
decide which files need to be copied.

Second Copy can copy files using FTP. This
is helpful if you want to copy files to a
remote computer that offers File Transfer
Protocol (FTP) service. From the File menu
select New FTP Profile to define the profile
to copy files to/from the FTP site.

There is an easy way to
back up the profiles. Select "Create Second
Copy Setup Folder..." from the Tools menu.

Second Copy 7 and 8 store their profiles and
settings information in a hidden file called
"profiles.dat" under "\Documents and
Settings\Username\Local Settings\Application
Data\Centered Systems\Second Copy" folder.
(where, <Username> is the currently logged in
username.)

In Windows Vista/7/2008, the profiles.dat file is stored under
"\Users\<Username>\AppData\Local\Centered Systems\Second Copy" folder.

Second Copy 2000 stores its profiles and settings
information in a hidden file called
"profiles.dat" under "\Program Files\SecCopy"
folder.

You can also import the profiles into Second
Copy by selecting "Import" from the "File"
menu.